Hold Your Horses

When my little sister picks up the phone, she answers “hold your horses!” every time. It’s her way of telling me “just hold on a minute.” She is well aware of my tendency to just start talking. 

In fact our lives here seem to be very much programmed to be rushed. That is an aspect of life in the pind in India that I miss, because the expectations for time seemed to be vastly different. The sense of time here seems to convey a constant urgency. I learned at a young age that if you want something changed, you take action. I became a high energy, action-oriented thinker; so when there is a problem I don’t like to sit and talk about it, I tend to figure out next steps and get them done. I simply go and fix it. I am realizing now that there are times that one should not act. There are times to be patient, sit in silence, to think things over, to take things slow, or to carefully plan. Strategic decisions need extra time to do them carefully without creating destruction. Some of the best wisdom I have had passed on this last year has been to wait and to let things unfold. 

I realize that we cannot waste our time in life, certainly God has only given us so many breaths. At the same time we have to value time as well. If we are running around disconnected from our souls (God) and bodies, we don’t actually value our time. It is the moments of processing, healing, listening to God’s voice (Naam) that is important. I told one of my non-Sikh friends today, that in the silence if you listen carefully you can hear God’s voice because it is always present. She told me to dig deep and listen more often. I am learning to just hold my horses. While I think that action is imminent, it can often wait. The waiting time is the time to dig deep and listen.